Ray Charles all the way live starts us off really, really good. And then we chill out with Sergio Mendes. And cap it all off with a bliss out behind 13 versions of Coltrane’s "Naima" featuring Mark de Clive-Lowe & Bembe Segue, Lonnie Smith, Art Farmer, Arthur Blythe, Norman Connors, Celine Rudolph, Kindred Spirits Ensemble, 4hero, Mark Murphy, McCoy Tyner, David Murray, Hal Galper, and John Coltrane.
...on Ray Charles...
I want to mention three things: 1. use of language, 2. jazz bona fides, and 3. an enduring interest in poly-rhythms. Of course there is far, far more that could be discussed; indeed, there are books on Ray Charles, but I’m simply trying to share a few notes that were prompted by the release of an expanded version of a live recording from the period just after Ray Charles left Atlantic Records.
LANGUAGE. I have been reading with interest recent discoveries and speculations in the fields of anthropology and linguistics (for example here and here). The main thread is that the origin of modern language is in southern Africa and consists of sounds rather than words. Sounds, carrying emotion. Not words, carrying cognition.
Ray Charles is a master at augmenting the lyrics with raw sounds, emotional utterances that are both entrancing and fulfilling.
JAZZ BONA FIDES. Like his idol, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles was an excellent jazz piano player (he even cut four or five jazz instrumental albums) but more than that, throughout Charles’ long and storied career he kept a good jazz band/orchestra. They started out as a combo in the fifties and sixties, six or seven pieces plus back up singers. Afterwards they grew to big band and orchestra status. Can’t think of anybody else who kept a jazz band together for that long and who was not primarily a jazz musician.
POLY-RHYTHMS. From the jump with the Newport album, Ray Charles was always doing more than a straight four/four and a heavy backbeat. Of course, he favored the three/four feel of gospel, triplet figures that were far, far away from waltzes in effect even though the same in rhythm notation.
—kalamu ya salaam